>> john, nice to see you again. >> bill, thanks. >> we appreciate it. >> that is this edition of "the factor." thanks very much for watching us. i am bill o'riley, and please, always remember that the spin stops right here. we are definitely looking out captioned by closed captioning services inc. >> if you can't pick your own food, are you free? >> basic food freedom of choice should be as important as the freedom to worship or own a gun. >> does that mean i can eat him

or her or him? >> was it good? >> who is bulk. that's our show tonight. [applause] >> and now, john stossel. [applause] >> food can kill. people eat the wrong stuff may get sick. that's why most everyone says we need government to set some limits. make sure there isn't bacteria in your food or dangerous chemicals and to make sure food companies tell you what's in their food and how fattening it is. state legislator felix ortiz has done that in new york city. he got trans-fats banned. calorie counts posted at mcdonald's and other fast food places. now he wants a ban on adding too much salt. do you think you have saved lives? >> absolutely. >> well, joel is a farmer, grows

vegetables vegetables vegetables and raise cows, chickens and pigs. joe, assume you want people to buy your beef and pork to be safe. don't we owe him a vote of thanks for saving us? >> no, i would say you're killing me out here. i'm trying to get my stuff to market and this plethora of government regulations is killing our farm and our ability to come to market. >> you're just a greedy businessman and you don't care if people die. let's go through some of the ways that assemblyman ortiz has saved us. the trans-fat ban. >> that's old news. how about you want a tax on junior food. >> well, we have a bill to ensure that we can minimize the carbohydrate in the market and we're giving the consumer chance to choose what they want to consume. >> so good food should cost

less, sure gary food more. >> correct. >> is apple jupes junk food? >> i don't believe they are categorized as that it. >> they have more sugar than coke and pepsi. >> we'll cross that bridge but i like my apples and i like my orange. >> okay. you also helped get these calorie counts posted at fast food places. >> that is correct. >> so our go into mcdonnell nadals and say this many calories. that help people. >> we have helped consumer make choices based on what they see and we have managed now to see a wonderful number of decreasing on people suffering from obesity and diabetes. >> it's decreasing? >> well, it's moving in that direction. and burger king and mcdonalds and becoming more responsible. >> a real study done on this in the fast food plays and you can say, doesn't cost that much to

put up a label, tell us the calorie count. but nyu went into the fast food places after your law went into effect and people said, oh, yeah, it's great we can see the calorie count and we are paying more attention and then the look at the receipts and saw they were eating more calories. didn't do any good. >> well, let me just say this. the best thing that we can do is to give the consumer the choice. the option. >> you wrote a book titled, everything i want to do is illegal. >> right. [applause] >> what's your point? >> my point is that everytime the government penetrates into the food system, the abuses mount occupy from the big guys and little guys like us get rooted back from the table due to a smothering bunch of regulations. >> the little guys, it puts them oust business, the big guys can afford these rules.

>> absolutely. the regulations are nonscalable. all sound wonderful when you first say them, and then as soon as the get implement on the ground, the innovative prototypes who want to bring innovation the marketplace have such a large overhead to get a place at the market place that these embryonic prototypes of innovation are stillborn because they have to be born too big. >> now, joel drinks milk that hasn't been pasteurized. raw milk. he thinks its healthier. [applause] >> so do they. i think he and they're ridiculous but we agree on one thing. this clip is creepy. government officials raided a food co-op in los angeles because they sold raw milk. >> drew their guns and i'm like, why are you drawing guns. >> they sevenned me. >> they thought we had cocaine in the papa ya or something. >> these people come and invade. ripped my house apart. took me down to the county jail.

booked me. photographed me like a criminal. >> so felix, you support government protecting us like that? >> i think that government interventions come as a result of when things get out of control. when you have a health care cost that go 150 5 billion -- it's their body. isn't that part of freedom, he can make his own stupid choices. >> i never believe i'm cutting anybody's freedom. give them the choice -- >> no you don't. you're banning things. you support bloomberg's ban on big soft drinks. >> the big soft drink is important to realize we need to make it smaller. you have children at the age of nine any own district where they suffer from hypertension as a result of too much soda, too much sugar, as a result that people are not taking their own responsibility. that's when government jump into it -- >> how can you say you're

leaving them a choice. you're jumping in and taking away choices. >> well, they should be glad what we trying to do it. make it smaller that people will be able to do better. >> this is dangerous, too big? >> tending how many of those you have today. >> one of these is illegal under your rules. >> that's the reason i have the surcharge to make sure people get discouraged from going items. >> you want to ban -- the bloomberg rule bans a drink this size. more than 16 ounces. >> i think it's a great idea and will continue to support my mayor. >> you want to ban extra salt. >> let me get back to the salt. this is a very important item we need to discuss and talk about. when you talk about having too much sodium on products, we talking about strokes, we talking about heart attack, hypertension. >> joel? >> the problem is that a government can tell you that you

can't eat this soda or the salt is the same government that can tell you, you can't have alternative treatments for cancer therapy. a government that decides that it can tell you that you can't make a risky decision, is a government that can deny you the right to make a healthy decision. you can't have both of them. [applause] >> last point. you support the mayor. bans on donations to homeless shelters. one of man who donated for 20 years was turned away when he tried to give away bagels and soup because he didn't know the salt and sugar content? at homeless shelters? >> let me make mylf very clear about what i support or don't support. sometimes we can't explain. i tell tell you guy to restaurant and i have my own choices. i ask the waitress, can you tell the chef to make sure he is not

salt in my item? and i make those choices. and the -- >> because you don't want salt, can't have salt? >> you have your choice, you can continue to do that but -- >> you're banning my choice. >> going to limit the amount of salt that go into your plate. i'm saving your life and the life of the people of this nation. >> well, thank you so much. felix, for saving my life, and joel, thank you for giving me more choices, which i prefer. the current leaders of our government are certain it's their job to help us exercise. eat less. and lose weight, and they say more must be done to get hefty foods into poor neighborhoods. my next guess is the author of "the hunger fix" which says fatty and salty foodded are drugs like cocaine and meth and need to be kept away from kids. dr. pam peek, teaches medicine the university of maryland, actually believes that food is like coke and meth?

>> no. not food. just certain foods. and it -- >> salty, fatty foods. >> well no; sugary, fatty, salt request foods that have been stuffed yesterday by world class scientists now at the national institutes of health. what is also fascinating is what to do with that. john, i've been stosselizeed about this. >> what does that mean? >> i went through a stossel stosselfication. >> what is the rolfe of government when you find out in certain people, when you have exposure to these refined processes foods -- i'm not talking about appled and oranges and tuna. aisle talking about the other stuff. that in certain people it really based upon very credible brain scans and excellent work, really works on the brain and the reward center just like, for instance, coke, meth, alcohol, and any other addition. >> lights up in the brain. >> you got it.

when that happens you have an imapart ability to be able to make a choice that's good for you. ask one who is an alcoholic just downed two bottles of wine. why don't you just do a little mod rates right now. you can't. you're in full-on addiction. so what do you do? should the government in this? are you ready? no. >> really? >> no. this is how you have been stosselizeed. >> since we haas had debate. >> i invited you on the show because you're the bad guy. you said in -- >> i've been transformed. >> you said government needs to educate people. i said educate. >> people need to understand that certain people are very, very susceptible to this. if you take -- let's just take that bottle of nasty stuff there. let's say we take that right

there if you say that i can't have a 16-ounce, what am i going to 2005 i have an issue like food addiction. honey, i'm going to score some other way. you can charge me. you can make me run around with eight ounces instead of 16 ounces and i'm going to score this thing and you can't do a thing about that. >> you're against mayor bloomberg's soda size thing but you say in your book, make free programs available to get people to detox and get off these foods. >> didn't say government. i said, can we have programs -- due know what the free programs? they're already in exist tense and done by private organizations. we have overeat efforts anonymous, food addicts anonymous. >> not government. >> no, nothing to do with government. these are free. don't cost a dime, and we actual agree about that. i told you i was stosselizeed. >> i'm delighted. how about the other issue i'm told there are food deserts where poor people live and,

therefore, michelle obama says, we have to invite supermarkets into n there, give them tax breeze pay for it because that's can't get fresh food and that's why poor people are fat. >> john, ever since that original myth came out about the food desert, we found out that by doing research, that it really wasn't true at all. >> oops, just as many supermarkets in those areas in. >> oopses and they do have a supermarket. you have a choice and we're right back to it. i want a ground surge of citizens out there who are just highly enlightened about this, who can finely get on out and do something for themselves. they're the ones with the choice here, and they need to be doing that for their families as well. >> all voluntary. >> nutritionist. >> dr. peak. thank you, may you all be stosselizeed. coming up 0, our taste test.

do you prefer beef steak or zebra steak. ready to eat some pink slime? [applause] card hassles?

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is it what we think it is? >> i used to work there at abc, there was always a startling news investigation. cell phones will give you cancer, so will teflon pants this scaremongering is constant and earlier this year the scare was pink slime. >> with 70% of the super market ground beef containing pink slime, how will know what's in your beef? >> is there something in there called pink slime? sounds awful. then as abc news explained, people are upset about that. >> parents, schools, state officials, insisting the government do something about pink slime. >> they're insisting because abc news just scared them to death. abc's reporting persuaded almost all school systems to stop using that form of meat in one month. the company that made it lost its -- lost 80% of its business. we invited the beef company to

come on this program and explain themselves but they said they can't talk about it because they sued abc. it's outrageous. this company secretly peddles this horrible thing called pink slime and won't talk about it now that they were caught by the heroes at abc? except speaking of food bunk, what i just said is utter bink. the pink sleep is safe. to help explain that's, let's talk to dan gainer of media research center. to, explain. >> well, bunk is the polite word. abc went on a crusade. three nights in a row, back in march, they pounded on this, in the first three minutes of their first broadcast. they said the term pink slip -- >> why shouldn't they? >> it's not pink slime. it's ground beef. i've been to the factory. i'm a city boy. i am -- >> some of that in here.

>> we've all eaten it. a couple activists who used to work for the fda didn't like this really cool scientific process that separates the beef trimmings and you get the remaining ground beef so they coined this term deliberately to hurt the company, and -- >> the company was doing something our instinct, taking the last bit bet of beef off the bone by trimming slightly and saved the money and saved the environment. >> anding for get just the environment. i get tired of hearing that argument. what about us? everybody on abc constantly saying, oh, you should eat leaner beef, worry about your health. so when we try to eat the leaper beef, they tack that away from us, too. >> and not using it wastes 5,000 companies a -- cows a day. >> they said the term pink slime

178 times either on their broadcast. >> then they started taking it back. >> there's a classic journalism. they said the term commonly used -- and then of course what you find, no, it's not. washington post, new york times, one or two times a most they ever used it prior to that. >> what's the agent? why? >> the agenda is all the activists who are pushing against meat, against food in general. what happened was this comes from a movie. the movie photo ink put out by participant media, the same peeve who brought us the al gore movie and other activists movies. the people at bpi -- the food company. >> so proud of the process, it was amazing to look at. they war so proud they let these people in to videotape. you don't dare let anybody videotape anything because they demonize it. >> the company closed three out

of four plants, laid off seven hundred american workers. >> the neck damage is far worse. >> in 20 years there hasn't been single issue instance of anybody being hurt by ping sleep and the industry calls is lean -- >> no slimier than other parts of beef. >> the keep here, bpi, received awards for how good a job they do, for consumer safety. it was just one constant hit job. >> so now the company is suing abc. i don't like that. that's sayings, we disagree and you should just shut up. there ought to be some other way for a company to fight back. >> here's the -- >> abc -- we have a right to below year. >> but don't have a right to slander or state things wrong. >> somebody was calling it pink slime and we just reported it. >> their point and they reason why they sued is because they said, we told you this was factually incorrect. we told you, you were

disparaging our product unfairly. what they tried to do by targeting the supermarkets and companies that used the product, tried to shut them down. >> for the record, if you're upset about what abc said, you should know that legally there's all kinds of stuff in food that probably would bother you more. for example, the fda says in a jar of mushrooms this size, there can legally be no more than 20 maggots. that's the phrase. no more than 35 fruit fly eggs. and in this much pasta, it can have up to 450 bug parts. i'm not saying these do but that's the law. and most of these products have insect parts and things that are to me far grosser than finely textured beef. but if a big media organization wants to get you, they will. >> and they did. >> thank you, dan gaynor.

i invited my old abc bosses to come on this program and respond, but they didn't respond. coming up, a taste test. we're passing out sames of zebra and antelope meat. which tastes better, and should we even eat that? and if so, then what about horse? or dog? what are the limits? that's next. that is next. [ male announcer ] this is joe woods' first day of work.

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[applause] >> we eat lots of beef in america and chicken. what about horse or zebra? why don't we eat those. aren't they kind of like cows? some of you shudder at the idea and it's illegal in some places like california and illinois,

and conventional wisdom is it's not right to eat a zebra or water buffalo. so how are you repulsed and want do our taste test here? a few of you. is this wrong? well, that's bunk, as the chef at beaver creek ranch in texas. beaver creek is a resort where guests pay to hunt zebra, water buffalo, and this cute animal and then they ea kill and eat it after its been cooked by a chef. so, at the ranch, people come for this. they're not schemish. >> right. 14 different varieties of animals. pick out which animal you want to hunt for and take you out, we harvest the animal, bring it back, and i took it. >> and people say it tastes good? >> of course. >> and it's actually better for you because it's leaner? >> it is.

and -- i've been a chef for years and beef from the grocery store versus cooking a zebra, for example, if you cook it on the grill so much more fat that comes out from a stake bought out a groceryster than if you cook a zebra steak. you have to baby it. you have to tepiderrize. >> leaner means maybe tougher. >> correct. but if you ad some good fats to like, like fig jam to it, blackberry jam, and coat if witness that and grill it, you get a whole different taste, and health conscious. >> you put no limit on what you would eat? you would eat horse? >> yes. >> dogs? >> of course. >> cats? >> i believe i have before. >> can you understand what why some people are put off by that? >> of course, i too. >> before tonight's show, johnny cooked some zebra and a kind of

antelope, and for a control some lam from the supermarket, and as you saw, we offered samples to our audience, so which is better? can people tell them the difference? we just labeled the meats a, b, and c. so let me can you, who liked a most? who liked b most? c? roughly evenly divided, though i thing c got the least. so, who recognized the lam? who thinks a was the lamb? almost no one. who thinks b was the lamb? who thinks c was the lamb? all right. well, you're actually right. some of you, anyway. c was the lamb. b is the weird antelope. was it good?

>> who liked it? >> all of it? >> i'm not sure what the lesson in this is. i would argue that part of being free is that it's wrong for skim california to say you may not eat horse, which is a lean meat. it should be our choice. >> i believe i'm strongly for that. i believe it's our choice. >> well, it's not, and those states are also going bankrupt. johnny, thank you very much. next, you know which foods are good for you and which are bad? turns out that what you think you know may not be so.

>> when i was a kid, and i don't

have a picture of me as a kid -- my mom told me spinach is the healthiest food in the world because it has iron. now we're told it's not the best source of iron. the iron myth grew out of a mathematical calculation. a researcher accidently moved a decimal point. so he thought, it should be there, turns out it was supposed to be over here. simple mistake and thought it had ten times more iron thanked it. oops. but the press reported the spinach milt and i -- myth and i had to eat spinach. i assume nutritional advice we get today is based on better science but my guests say today's advice is just as dubious. can't be. >> a lot of ideas got embraced since the 1970s that were based on assumptions, not

rigorous science, and the experiments made to test the high moth these have been for so we've been living with that and in the process we have had an obesity increase, type 2 diabetes is increasing four--fold and if the food pyramid is right, the question is why is obesity and diabetes increasing. >> peter, you went to stanford, -- residency at john hopkins, yet the nutritional instruction you got wasn't good? >> that's a great point. i thought it was i followed it myself and certainly told everybody around me to follow it. and then about three or four years ago i wound up being 40-pounds overrate and prediabetic, even though i was exercising and eating all the

right foods. so i hat me questioning what it was i was believing and preaching a dogma. >> let's back up. in 1977, hour government came out with dietary goals for you, increased cash hydrate consumption to 50-60% of your calories. reduce fat from 40 to 30%. based on research that ultimately led to the famous food pyramid, which told to us eat breads, then vegetables, fruits, less meat and milk, and now michelle obama has her new version out called, my plate. it's comforting 0 to know this is all based on settled science. but my producer found this clip of a government scientist testifying before the senate. >> i have pleaded in my report and will plead again orally here for more research on the problem before we make announcements to the american public. >> i would only argue that senators don't have the luxury that a research scientist does

awaiting until everybody last shred of evidence is in. >> so, the politicians as usual went off halfcocked and sold us a bill of goods. >> that's one way to look at it. the head of the national academy of science said we're about to engage in this huge nutritional experiment you have the american public as the subjects and then, 30 years later we have gotten sicker and sicker. >> much more information about nutrition and not getting fat and we're fatting. >> and we're fatter, and more diabetic, and one o the reasons we're here, that can be fixed with good science. >> well, good science -- you have a book out called good calories, bad calories. but i watch tv and i know that a calorie is a calorie. just no difference. what are you talking about? >> the idea of a calorie is a calorie, the reason you get fat is because you take in more energy than you expend and it comes in the form of calories as

a unit of heat and each nutrient you eat, protein, fat, cash bow height -- cash hydrates. some they have different affects, some are metabolized in different organs and different hormones that affect whether or not you will store calories as fat or burn them as fuel, so there's this counterargument that maybe it's not the calories. it's the hormonal effect on the foods. it's what they do to us, not how much energy they bring to us. >> the u.s. department of health its saying a calorie, is a calorie, a calorie. our government. are they stupid? have an agenda? >> just hasn't been tested. >> just hasn't been tested. >> one of the things gary and i did when we started this organization, was went back and -- >> theirs organization being? >> the nutrition science initiative. we went back and looked at every scientific study back to world

war ii that attempted to answer that equipment think gary we found 82 studies that had attempted to answer that but they were all fraught with the same sort of limitations and problems. so in 2012 we actually don't know the answer to that question base opened rigorous science, although that's plenty of anecdotal evidence to suggest that a calorie is not a calorie. >> one thing i know that is absolutely must be true is you should eat less fat. fat does all this harm. and yet you eat lots of fat. and you're a doctor. stanford doctor. what's that about? >> well, like i said, three or four years ago when i got the point where i was too overweight to handle my own existence and my wife said i needed to be a little less not then, i realized i probably had a co-bow hydrate intolerance issue and all those whole grains and things i was eating were leading to me becoming fatter and i realized if i stripped that stuff out of

my diet and ate more fat, believe it or not. all the metabolic dry rangement -- derangment would go away. >> what happened to peter happens to a lot of people. that is that some kind of bizarre anecdotal event that just happened to peter because he is weird stanford educate editor? it's common. maybe the nutritional advice we are all getting is wrong. maybe the food guide pyramid -- mission in 60s we believe that bread, pasta, potatoes, rice, were inherently fattening. >> a picture of a piece of bread with butter. >> the idea is used to be that the butter was considered healthy and the bread was considered fattening. then our governmented it was the butter that was path 'king and

the bread we should eat and that coincides with obesity. >> they also said margarine was good for you, trans-fats, eggs were terrible but now agencies are okay -- but now eggs are okay. >> the reason for the flipping and flopping back and forth is because of the kind of research we do is incapable of establishing a definitive result. >> why don't we do this? it's important. >> well, it's really hard. you could use laboratory rats for example and it's really easy. put the rat in the came, give it the chow. >> or even a double blind test with people. >> with drugs, for example, it's easy, take this pill or take that pill. when you're studying nutrition it's hard you send people home with a diet book and say, john, i want you do follow this diet and it's hard to do. so we really can't measure what we think we're measuring. and at it probably a result of this as opposed to some sort of gross incompetence that's led to this ambiguity.

>> well, thank you. peter and tia, and gary, coming up, did you the that the coming budget cults will kill you? you're going to die of food poisoning? that and more food bunk next. [applause] foo

>> we're back now with your comments or questions for my guests, they include farmer joel, who says we have too many stupid rules. -- tia says food advice is bunk, and dr. peek who says people are addicted to food like they're addicted to cocaine. first to my facebook page. kent williams asks if there's is in hard evidence to worry about genetically modified organisms in a bunch of foods. in california just had a vote which -- but the people voted no. is that terrible? you're a natural foods nut. >> that's where i part company with these folks. i say i ooh be able too label it as gmo free. don't need more laws. >> you're not allow -- you you

can't label it. so people can't know -- we don't need another labeling law. we just need the free tom to but whatever we want to on the label and let the market decide. >> le. [applause] >> what is the idea of an empty tallry and are they maybe more addicting than healthy calories? >> usually the empty calories are the re refined process cal res. you take cane sugar and beat tote death and process it and spit it out at a manufacturing plant and went from a dark wonderful food and now it's refined sugar. and it's got basically no major nutrients other then the fact it gives you a little energy. >> so what. eating more of this stuff living longer. >> it's about choice. if you want to have that empty:ry in a cookie, knock yourself out as long others you don't get into a bender and not

eating everything that isn't tacked down around you. in people dot that. you have too use your common sense. you know your body better than anybody knows. >> is there evidence to suggest that different people should eat according to their blood type or body chemistry? does it vary person to person? >> that's a great question. strikes me as almost impossible to believe that every human being on earth is going to equally well on the sackett same diet and i hope that the future of medicine and nutrition is one where we can customize and tailor things based on people's -- all the things that influenced you up until your point in life today. >> dr. tea, what you were saying, your ideal diet sounded in line with they taylor diet. >> i think it's interesting. the labels are confusing. i think what i would say with respect to myself is what i figure out was i had a pretty

significant intolerance to most of the foods i was eating, and what i eat today probably looks a lot like someone consumed in a pathowlightic time. i don't adhere to rules -- i'll give you one example. i think a hard core paleo person advocate that dairy doesn't make sense and i have found for me, though i found for many others, dairy does really well. so it comes back to the theme we're hearing that at the individual level we have to figure out what works for, but it's really do to have science that informs that so you know you're making a reasonable starting guess as to where to go. >> one tiny little flip to that. you're a guy guy, and women, when hey have been studied with these dietary trouble because women are a little more carbohydrate attracted so they'll last several weeks, if that long 0, an strict diet like

this, which is very high fat and only takes in 10% carbohydrate. women after a while start bumping it up. a lot of this has to do with our own blueprint and makeup. when you look at the research, what we haven't seen enough of is the gender differentiation and what we can do to help you in customize that based upon gender. >> on that note, thank you all, and coming up, the truth about food safety. >> if the government has no interest in telling you. interest in telling you.

>> there's no way

>> did you reader copy of food poisoning bulletin? it warns us if government spend less, foot will be less safe because a less village land fda is a boon for marginal companies attempting to cut corners. my goodness, we're going to get food poisoning, seems logical because before government passed food safety rules upton sinclair wrote about the jungle that meat processing was. the blazing mid-summer sun beat down upon cattle crowded into pens and moist flesh and rendering vats that smelled like the craters of hell. >> you get the drift. it was bad. then, we got billions of dollars

of government regulation and that's why food is safe today. yipee. no wonder when the republicans called for a small drop in spending, the head lynn was, hello e.coli. a race the bottom, the lawyers behind that food bullet continue say, that because sanitation costs money, it creates a competitive disadvantage for companies who want to produce quality for us. that makes sense, but it's bunk. it's not government that keeps e.coli to a minimum. it's competition. tyson foods, purdue chicken, mcdonalds and so on, have brands to maintain, customers to lose. ask jack-in-the-box. they lost millions after a food

poisoning scandal. our stodgy agriculture department has an army of inspectors eye-balling chickens on aassembly lines. they watch each bird looking for visibility signs of abnormality. but bacteria is invisible. food producers have more sophisticated tests on their own. one employs 2,000 more safety inspectors that government requires. to kith path the generals, beef carcasses are at any rated with rinses and a 185-degree steam vacuum. production facilities are checked with sanitation with microbiological testing. if anything is detected. they say we reclean the equipment equipment is routinely taken completely apart to be swab tested. none of that is required specifically by government. i explain more about this in my book. the bottom line is that we are